miscellany of these years
shared assemblages
that dissemble & amble
what connects in
the terror of any given
life? From or through
sleep, this den of otherness
you wake into boyhood,
the hooded stranger
of adult-heit,
busied with petty chafings
declarations, declamations,
steamed & salted
the cracked lips bite.
Sundays, other days,
head into the blue yonder
the colder depths.
A boy with branches twice
his size, held up
antlers, a gift
for you,
his small carefree
praise song.
The little we know
pushed forward by
nib & ink, pebbles heaped
against the abyss
of the unknown,
our only
ground.
Only the smallest
meanings warm us,
refracting through
the house of mirrors,
pinging off wall
after wall, mounting
the virtual volume
we call and recall
the real.

Poet, translator & essayist Pierre Joris left Luxembourg at
age 19 & has since lived in the U.S., Great Britain, North Africa, and
France. Rain Taxi praised his 2001 collection, Poasis: Selected Poems
1986–1999, for “its physical, philosophical delight in words and
their reverberations.” Since then he has published two chapbooks of
poetry: Permanent Diaspora (Duration Press) and most recently The
Rothenberg Variations (Wild Honey Press, Ireland).

In 2003
Wesleyan U.P. brought out his collection of essays A Nomad Poetics.
Recent translations include 4x1: Work by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke,
Jean-Pierre Duprey & Habib Tengour and Abdelwahab Meddeb’s The
Malady of Islam.With Jerome Rothenberg he edited the award-winning
anthologies Poems for the Millennium and, just out from Exact Change,
Pablo Picasso, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems. In
late 2004 Green Integer will reissue three volumes of his translations of Paul
Celan: Breathturn, Threadsuns and Lightduress and University of
California Press will bring out his Paul Celan:
Selections.

Pierre Joris often performs his work in collaboration
with vocalist & visual artist Nicole Peyrafitte, most recently touring their
multimedia show SumericaBachbones throughout Europe & the US. He
teaches poetry and poetics at University in Albany, NY where he lives with
Nicole Peyrafitte & their son Miles. During fall 2003 he was Berlin Prize
Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Visit Pierre Joris’s website at
http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ .

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